MetaFilter posts tagged with videogames and music

Hey! It's a bunch of lists we can all agree on!

Navelgazer — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:02:32 -0800

The A.V. Club's Best of the Decade: Films. Performances. Scenes. Bad Movies. Books. Short Story Collections. Comics. Video Games Music. Metal. Electronic Music. Comedy Albums. Television Series. Television Episodes. Reality Series/Competitions. Made-For-TV Movies/Miniseries. Late-Night Comedy/Talk Shows. One-Season Wonders. And the orphans.

Toe Jam and Earl Jam

joshwa — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:38:24 -0800

Os Gameboys are a band from Brazil who play only music from classic videogames. They are really, really good. (via waxy: "the best live Mario cover I've ever seen")

"I wish Phil Spector were here..."

Artw — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:30:04 -0800

Zombies Vs Beatles (slyt)

Ethnography of Rock Band Bar Night

k8t — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:56:02 -0800

Ethnography of Rock Band Bar Night. The Rock Band video game (and the similar Guitar Hero) are more than video games where players try to earn points and some are exploring the deeper meaning of such games. In this ethnographic study of a Rock Band bar night, Kiri Miller, discovers that Rock Band bar night is, surprisingly, a friendly, accessible musical scene with a tight-knit group of friends at its core—more like an open Irish session than a karaoke night, and with fewer barriers to participation than either of those other typical bar events. Miller researches GH and RB and is currently collecting data from players, if you're interested in participating. She keeps a blog on her research as well. Read her (interesting) thoughts on being a researcher on this topic. She also provides some audio interviews with players. She argues that "[a]nyone who has played Guitar Hero or Rock Band for more than five minutes will tell you that it requires a deeper level of musical engagement than listening to an iPod—intellectually, emotionally, physically, and often socially" and "the games have substantially changed the way they listen to popular music when they’re not playing." She also asks if GH/RB playing "authentic"? It certainly is a performance.

This balladry makes me spoony

grobstein — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:27:15 -0800

Final Fantasy IV remix project. This week the videogame music rearrangement site, OCRemix.org, released a new project covering Nobuo Uematsu's soundtrack to FFIV (originally FFII in the US). FFIV's was the first game soundtrack I fell in love with, back in 2nd grade. Maybe you feel the same. The musicians have generally eschewed crowd-pleasing statements of the original's iconic themes, which is . . . bittersweet. Try

this cafe-vibe take on Rydia's theme,
this rhythmically fractured version of the sweet "Welcome to Our Town,"
"Into the Darkness" transposed and remade as "Step into the Light,"
or this slight, anti-triumphal take on the series's traditional victory fanfare.
And here is the "Theme of Love" made up as what sounds like classical guitar.

All FFIV remixes on OCR. All OCR album projects (I recommend the Street Fighter project, which was used for the soundtrack to the "new" game, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix).

People who like people like you will like you

The Devil Tesla — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:33:05 -0800

the doyouinverts sings songs about old friends who don't play videogames anymore, Edge Magazine's scoring system and a love song to an imported Japanese videogame. They are a regular feature on British videogame radio show/podcast One Life Left.

Street Fighter

muggsy1079 — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:56:58 -0800

Street Fighter II. It basically created the 2d-beat-em-up, and invented the combo, the special move, a wide roster of diverse, playable characters who people grew to love, and all the other things that gamers have taken for granted for years. It spawned a whole series, none of which ever quite captured the original's charm or had the same influence. This was a game that people obsessed over - bands were named after its special moves, rappers cited it in their lyrics, and even Premier League footballers weren't immune to its charms. Poor Raul Julia's final film was this masterpiece, and a new version's headed straight to DVD very soon. Now, 17 years later, Street Fighter 4 is about to be released in Europe and the nostalgia machine is going into overdrive. The game's producer's been talking about its links to Street Fighter II, reviewers are getting misty-eyed , and even musicians are getting in on the act with Akira the Don making his very own Street Fighter-themed track. Apparently it's pretty good. Hadouken!

Real guitars are't just for old people

darkripper — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:52:45 -0800

Little Big Star (free software, currently in beta - video) it's the first guitar rythm game with support for real instruments. In the next months two more products of the same kind should be released, Disney Star Guitar and Guitar Rising. Real istruments or - at least - more realistic fake ones; is this the future of the genre? No one knows yet if this kind of software will help people to learn or get better at playing, but it will sure turn the difficulty up to eleven. [bonus track: Don't forget you can also use your rockband drums as electronic drums but you might want to buy a second set.]

bored swedish multi-instrumentalist + youtube = ?

defenestration — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 22:24:25 -0800

Fredrik Larsson (Freddie25) presents: Für Elise, Mega Man 9: Rock Medley and Wind Waker Unplugged.

LittleBigPlanet Recalled

yellowbinder — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:52:12 -0800

LittleBigPlanet, the highly anticipated create your own platformer game by Media Molecule, originally set to release next week, has been recalled. The reason? Apparently one of the music tracks used in the game, "Tapha Niang" by Grammy Award winner Toumani Diabate, contains verses from the Qur'an. As it's a no no to mix Islamic holy text with music, Sony has pulled the game after complaints. The problem has been fixed, but no new release date has been announced.

Free video game music - whoo-hoo!

Reverend Robbie — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:20:49 -0800

CNet's Music site is one of my favorite sources of often surprisingly good independent music. As I write this, I'm listening to Zo Wanti Music's Lost Ship, a mellow New Age environmental piece that is very nice and relaxing. They have an enormous selection of music here, but one of the oddest and sometimes most rewarding to pick through is the game soundtracks/musical scores section. The artists listed here all compose music for video games (or have in the past). It's strangely fun to listen to some of their pieces and wonder what game that could belong to.

Ain, tsvai, dry, shiki-shiki shvanie

jbickers — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:30:09 -0800

Arguably the most addictive song on the formidable 214-song GTA IV soundtrack is "Schweine" by Russian singer/actress Glukoza ("selling music without sex since 2003"). Unfortunately, it's not on the official soundtrack disc (which, in all fairness, must have been hell to make), but Rockstar has made the in-game station playlists available on Amazon.

Crash Flash Quick Metal Bubble Heat Wood Air Crash

Navelgazer — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:14:25 -0800

Crash Man beats Flash Man beats Quick Man beats Metal Man beats Bubble Man beats Heat Man beats Wood Man beats Air Man beats CRASHMAN!!! (ad infinitum)

Improve your Rock Band drumming technique

nthdegx — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:41:26 -0800

Improve your Rock Band drumming technique. Rock Band as in the videogame, that is.

And you thought Guitar Hero was cool...

Ufez Jones — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:51:14 -0800

With the wild success of the Guitar Hero series, using video game controllers shaped like guitars is nothing new. However, the duo at Modal Kombat actually use guitars as video game controllers. They won't reveal all of their tricks, but you can read a bit about their technology here and at this interview with Urban Guitar. The results are awfully impressive. View the original Modal Kombat here, and their newest installment, the admittedly trippy GuitarKart here. via

Now if they would only put one of her damn songs in the game

Weebot — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:16:41 -0800

Carrie Brownstein's new band, a. Rock Band has been released, and has, unsurprisingly, the gaming press enamored. So how does it compare to, well, a real band? Guitarist Carrie Brownstein (formerly of Sleater - Kinney) takes it for a go-around and gives it a write up.

Bleep, now with added bloop!

Glow Bucket — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:56:13 -0800

The dark side of Phobos, soundtrack tunes of the seminal first person shooter Doom from 1993 as an album remade by fans. The project originated at Overclocked Remix, a site dedicated to album en de a v o r s of this sort. Of course there are others doing this as well, the freeware Jump'n'Run Doukotsu Monogatari (Cave Story) for example got this treatment. Not as albums, but SID tunes have been remixed a lot (e.g. here, here) and by Machinae Supremacy. Would you like a radio station with this music to tune into? You've got it.

Music of golden proportions

jbickers — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 13:51:08 -0800

Zelda and the Golden Ratio. A fascinating examination of the music from Nintendo's Zelda games, and the recurring appearances of 0.618, the bisection point on a line at which the relationship of the shorter segment to the longer one is the same as that of the longer section to the whole line.

MARIO 0x23 WORLD 1-1 TIME 278

Robot Johnny — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:52:15 -0800

Super Mario Brothers sound effects. Boing! Boing! CRUNCH! Ding! Ding! Ding! Whoop! Boing!

DJ Format featuring Abdominal & D-sisive

Pretty_Generic — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:56:42 -0800

Witness the Whiteness as borderline-albino Canadian nerdcore MCs kick it Konami-school [Windows Media/Quicktime; more]

xoc - SMW

Pretty_Generic — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 06:46:03 -0800

SMW - The complete soundtrack to Super Mario World, covered by one man using dozens of instruments. Roughly in game order, faithful to the originals, with some bizarre artistic license thrown around. A private hobby made public. Dedicated to Koji Kondo.

Video game music is teh hotness

knave — Mon, 23 May 2005 15:22:49 -0800

VGMix is a site that hosts MP3s made by video game afficionados who have remixed the tunes from their favorite video games, old and new alike. Check out the releases page and try out a few songs. You can also search for songs by a particular game system, genre, specific game, etc. (Unfortunately, search seems broken for me right now, but it usually works!) The users generally provide extensive reviews that will help you sort out the great from the mediocre before downloading.

Sierra Adventure Games live on!

Stan Chin — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 14:02:48 -0800

Kings Quest 9, Leisure Suit Larry 8, and Space Quest 7. Sierra's legendary Adventure Gaming francises are stuck in vaporware purgatory. No new Larry according to Al Lowe, but KS9 goes on developed by fans without Roberta Williams, and Scott Murphy's (of The Two Guys from Andromeda) attempt at SQ7 got cancelled. No word from Jane Jenson on a new Gabriel Knight, Police Quest still lives on, although no longer in adventure format. Of course what I was REALLY researching for was the possiblity of a sequel to The Adventures of Willy Beamish. Oh well, at least you can still rock out to all the old Sierra Tunes. Overall, not a bad legacy for a company whose first adventure game was Softporn.

kingmissile — Wed, 03 Oct 2001 17:55:49 -0800

Do you miss the music from your old NES games? Well if you do, be sure to check out the minibosses. They're a band that only plays the songs to classic video games from the Nintendo Entertainment System. Great stuff. I particularly enjoyed the Wizards & Warriors track amusing, since I was addicted to that game when I was younger. Also, am I the only one who thinks there should be a new console system DEDICATED to only 2D games? 3D games are neat 'n all, but I don't think enough good 2D games are being made anymore. The Gameboy Advance is probably the only system doing that sort of thing right now, but it's just a portable.

mathowie — Wed, 03 Nov 1999 17:44:47 -0800

Did you ever play console games for hours on end? I bet you can recall the annoying MIDI music that went with them. Relive the good old days at the Video Game Music Archive.